Ten minutes later, the people's business having been concluded, the gavel came crashing down and the figures below clamored out of their seats. They pumped each other's hand, gave a hug here and there, boomed goodbyes in hearty voices and disappeared as quickly as children on the last day of school.
Jude and Skyler had to ask directions three times, but eventually they found the office. The door with a glazed window and the number 316 was closed. They passed it by and stood far away at the end of the corridor where it joined the rotunda, waiting. All up and down the hall, doors opened and men and women hurried past, carrying briefcases and magazines, a look of urgent expectation on their faces. After a good ten minutes, just when the place was quieting down, the door to 316 opened. Out scurried the small man with glasses. Seen from the same level, his body possessed an avocado-like shape.
He walked right at them. The two withdrew behind a pedestal bearing a marble likeness of William Jennings Bryan, standing in mid-oratory, one hand outstretched, the other clasped to his heart.
"Get a good look," exhorted Jude, remaining out of sight behind the statue.
The man emerged from the corridor, walking quickly, and veered on one heel. He headed for a door in the opposite direction.
Turn around, Skyler commanded mentally. Turn around!
The man continued on his way, reached the door. Just then Jude sneezed, a loud, rip-roaring sneeze that echoed deep into the corridor.
The man turned and Skyler got a good look. So good he was able to quickly turn his back and move behind Bryan's boot. When he stepped out again, the man was gone, the bang of the door resounding through the rotunda.
Skyler said only one word: "Bull's-eye."
"We've got one more port of call," said Jude, looking at his watch. "If we hurry, we can just make it."
In the taxi, he gave Skyler a lecture on the First Amendment, the freedom of the press and the glories of the Fourth Estate. When all else fails in a democracy, he said, when you're desperate and don't now where to turn, you can look to the nation's newspapers for deliverance.
"And that's why I'm already getting pissed off because of what we're about to find out," he declared.
The executive offices of Worldwide Media Inc. were the top three floors of a modern building on Connecticut Avenue. From it Tibbett and his executives could look down, figuratively and literally, upon the White House.
Once inside, Jude recalled that the lobby had an exit at either end. Hordes of people were already rushing out both of them. That was bad news: if Jude and Skyler door-stopped one exit, their man could slip out the other. There was nothing for it but to try to cut him off on the twelfth floor. Jude knew from a previous visit to Washington — when the bureau chief had for some reason invited him to the annual political roast known as the Gridiron — that the company had its own reception lounge there. The executives riding down from the top floors transferred elevators to reach the lobby.
He also knew there would be a receptionist on the twelfth floor who would demand to see their identification. He had his Mirror press card, but what would Skyler do? He was the one who counted. Maybe they could sweet-talk their way.
His worries were for naught. When they stepped off the elevator, the receptionist's chair was empty. So was the lounge. A TV set — tuned, of course, to Tibbett's broadcasting network, called "TB" by its detractors — played to itself in the corner.
Everything in sight, from the doorknobs to the curved hard steel of the chairs, was spanking modern. Floor-to-ceiling windows the color of smoke ran along one wall. All that glass lent an illusion of being suspended in space, like inside a cockpit. In fact, Tibbett was a fanatical pilot, and the aviation motif was picked up in knickknacks here and there, like model planes, propellers mounted on the wall and a crystal ashtray engraved with a photo of Lucky Lindy.
A couch rested on the wall opposite the elevators, and two deep leather chairs faced it at a gentle angle. Jude stationed Skyler in one of them. He handed him a newspaper from a pile behind the reception desk.
"Use this to cover your face if you need to. Don't forget: you have to see him, but he can't see you."
Jude waited in a small passage around the corner that led to the men's room.
They didn't have long to wait. Five minutes later, an elevator came down and a group of four men stepped out. They moved quickly to the downward bank. One was talking in the confident, preemptory manner of a CEO. Peering cautiously around the corner, Jude confirmed that it was Tibbett.
And Tibbett detached himself from the group and was headed right for him!
Jude beat a hasty retreat to the men's room. He heard the footsteps on his trail and ducked inside a stall. He stood upon the toilet and waited, holding his breath. He heard the door open. Then he heard footsteps approaching, a fly unzipping, a man relieving himself at the urinal, a loud flushing. He made not a sound. Finally, the footsteps moved again, the door opened and closed.
Jude waited a full two or three minutes before he dared to leave.
Skyler was in the lounge, standing.
"I was worried about you," he said. "He looked like he would have chucked you out the window."
"And is he one—"
"You know you don't even have to ask. I remember him clearly, because he flew his own plane."
The remark made Jude think. That evening back at the rooming house, he connected to the Mirror's web site and culled through photos of Tibbett until he found the one he was looking for. It showed the real estate mogul dressed in a brown safari shirt, posing for the camera somewhere in the tropics. In the background were palm trees and the nose of a small aircraft.
"Take a look," said Jude. "Is this the plane?"
"Absolutely. I recognize the name—Lorelei. And I recognize something else. This is the exact same kind of plane I hid in to get off the island."
Jude looked at the name and saw a small insignia under it. He got closer to the screen so that he could make it out, and then he could see what it was — a tiny W.
Chapter 25
Jude and Skyler made preparations for the trip south. Finally, after all this time of trying to devise ways to locate the island, they had a solid clue — the photo of the plane — that might point them in the right direction.
But first they needed money and a car.
Jude called Tom Mahoney, an old friend in the Mirror's Washington bureau, and met him for a hamburger. Mahoney was a legend, and not just in his own mind. He had been on the political beat for as long as anyone could remember, and all those lobster lunches and steak dinners showed; he weighed in at about 270 pounds, and that before the first round of drinks, which began shortly after noon. But pound for pound, he was the best reporter around: good with anecdotes, loaded down with home numbers and able to pound out a banner lead — all on deadline. Jude had a lot of time for him.
He and Jude went way back, to Mahoney's slimmer days when Jude had been briefly trying his hand as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press and Mahoney had worked for UPI. They'd met over a coup in Nigeria; both had seen the bullet-riddled body of the head of state in the back of a Mercedes, but Mahoney hadn't been able to file; he couldn't use the telex. Jude, a competitor but always the gentleman, sent the story for him, though not until his own was already on the wire. Mahoney never forgot the favor.
"What d'ya need?" he asked.
"Two thousand," said Jude, and he was grateful that Mahoney hadn't flinched. "And the use of a car."